


Glass Glitters More Brightly

by MooseFeels



Series: Kept [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Past Abuse, Past Non-Con, Past Underage, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:30:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel has been kept all of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Castiel is six when they take him from his village and sell him to the shut doors.

He was looked at by powerful men and beautiful women, their hands firm on his throat as they moved his head to see his face. Their voices low and powerful. Their commands inescapable.

“You are property now, boy,” one of them had said. “And you will obey or we will be forced to find punishments for you.”

The subtle things they did- the delicate arts of starvation and bondage and tattooing- sometimes made him envy his brother who was sold to a whip.

Castiel is twelve when he is sold from the training house to his first brothel. He is fourteen when he first lays with a man. Now he is twenty and he has been used up. He can still sit in the rooms and play the harp- he plays quite well. He can serve tea, he can arrange flowers, he can dance. He can tell stories, deep and great and strange stories he has heard from other customers. He can dress himself and dress others.

He cannot feel.

He can remember their hands on his body, he can remember their touches and kisses as something that happened to him, as a past experience. He can remember desire, however strange and foreign, as it seems now. He can remember wanting.

He can remember when his body took their kisses. He can remember when his body took their touches. He can remember when his body wanted their hands and their fingers and when his own cock and hole behaved accordingly.

Now he wants nothing but to be alone and left at peace. Now he is a kept bird and not a kept hole.

One day, and it won’t be long, he will be sold again. He is not patient enough to teach new whores- he is not cruel enough to lie to them about what they have been sold into. He will be sold and he will be one of many things. A house slave and attendant. A bought performer. A field hand. A caged bird.

Castiel will not die a free man; any hope of such died in him long ago.

He looks out the window, down at the city below. He has never stepped in its streets. It has grown around the house over the years and now it swallows it. Castiel has watched it, patiently, for years. He has watched the far away palace like a steady jewel on the horizon. He has watched the disappearance of trees and fields around him. He has watched it all like he has watched the disappearance and appearance of hungry eyes in his life.

Two steady things in Castiel’s life- the palace from far away and the tattoos on his back and ribs.

The door to his quarters opens, and Castiel turns from where he has been sitting in the windowsill to look at the boy they have sent to introduce him to the client.

The boy is slight of frame and kind. He will learn.

He bows slightly and leaves the room, and now there is only the cloaked figure in Castiel’s room.

The door is shut.

Castiel does not speak until he is spoken to. This is a lesson he learned quickly.

“They told me you could tell stories,” the man says.

“I know many, lord,” Castiel says, and he kneels on the floor. “What would you like to hear?”

The figure, he is not looking to be seen for whatever reason. His reasons are his own, Castiel reminds himself. Not his place to ask questions. His place to remember the stories and to make them beautiful.

“Can you tell me one about fire?” the man asks. “I think I would like to hear about fire.”  
Castiel continues kneeling, looking at the floor. Head downward. “We are told fire was given to us by the Angel Gabriel, many years ago. He spoke the word and the flame was, and we suffered less for it. It is for this reason that we venerate Gabriel, he who is messenger and firebringer. It is why we give him the first day of the working week, when our newest labors are devoted to him. It was him that gave us the technology that gave us words, for the most holy speech is the flame.”

The man shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Maybe not a story about fire, then. Maybe a story about pain.”

“All stories are stories about pain, lord,” Castiel says. “You must simply wait long enough.”

The man pauses, thoughtful, and says, “Please stop kneeling, you make my knees ache just to look at you.”

Castiel stands but bows his head.  “Would you care for me to undress you, lord? The noon is hot, I would not care for you to overheat.”

The stranger shakes his head. “I would not want you to scream from my scars,” he answers. “I am sorry. The war was long and hard.”

Castiel bows his head. “I could turn,” he offers. “Or shut my eyes, if you would like. I understand the need for privacy.”

He had not even known there had been a war. That means returning soldiers will start coming in. His inability to feel will become secondary to his presence as an owned hole and he will stay in the house a little longer. He does not know if this is relief or more panic that he feels suddenly.

“Please,” he says. “A story.”

“There once were seven brothers,” Castiel says. “Fond of each other and very obedient. Very loving. The two eldest they were twins and the closest two brothers could be outside of two bodies. One brother, he looked out onto his father’s world and he saw his commands and his orders. He saw himself as a servant bent to his father’s will. The other twin, he looked out on his father’s lands and he saw himself sovereign and master.”

“And the obedient brother, he cast his other brother down from the kingdom- yes, I know,” he interrupts. “Please. They told me you were the best storyteller, that the words lived inside of you.”  
“Please,” Castiel says suddenly. “Do not blaspheme so, lord.”

“Blaspheme?” the stranger asks.

“The Angel Gabriel, he is jealous. Protective. He sees what is his and he keeps it. The stories, all stories, my voice, they are not gifts. When I die, he will take them back and give them to someone else, but while I live he can still take them from me. I do not wish to be struck mute, my lord, or lose the stories inside of me before my time.”

The stranger shifted in place. Moved in such a way that he was clearly looking around the room, assessing something. “You are very devout,” he comments.

“Whores are afforded prayer freely and little else,” Castiel says, and then he closes his eyes and his mouth. Terrified and sure. Ready to feel a slap or worse. “I am sorry, lord, please, do not beat me or tell my masters, they will brand me and sell me and I will die in a mine with my lungs full of dust. Please.”

The stranger stays still a long time. “This city fell,” he says. “There are no masters any more, or any chains.”  
No. No this isn’t real. Castiel has not fallen for such tricks since he was much younger. Castiel shakes his head. “Please,” he says. “Please don’t be cruel, lord. I will shake and moan for you, I swear. I will like it for you, if you please will not be so cruel as to give false hope.”

The stranger holds out his hands, a gesture to calm him. “I’m being honest. I thought you knew and were just...indulging a dumb soldier. No, please, your kingdom fell, there is a new prince, a new government. New laws. All slaves are freed.”

Castiel looks at the door and he looks at his window. He looks at the stranger.

He looks at the palace, the jewel at the center of the city.

He looks back at the stranger.

He looks at the jewelry on his wrists and fingers.

Says finally, “I haven’t been outside since I was sold.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Castiel looks at his foot, at the chain that is long enough to let him travel from his bed all around his room. He looks at the stranger and says, “Do you have a key?”

The stranger pulls a sword from belt and the chain clashes brightly against the metal before it snaps, disconnects. Four links remain, broken.

Castiel looks at his bare feet. He’s never owned shoes.

“We’ll find you a pair, it won’t be hard,” the stranger says, noticing Castiel’s own gaze. “I have a horse you can ride on the way out. If you want to come- to come with me.”

“I-” Castiel says, breath caught. “I have nowhere else to go.”

“I’m Dean,” the stranger says.

“They named me Castiel,” he answers. He bites his lip. “I had another name before I was bought, but I don’t remember it.”

The stranger extends his hand outward. “Please,” he asks.

The remains of the chain rattle on the floor as Castiel steps out of his room and into the rest of the house.

It is empty. The others, they must be gone. There are no servants, there are no customers. Just Castiel and this stranger named Dean- not even a sign of the boy who brought Dean in. The floor is rough under his feet, unswept and dirty. Sand under his toes.

They get to the door to the outside, and Castiel says, “Wait.”

There is a low table by the door, which is shut against a wind that is roaring outside. Castiel stands beside the table and begins to take off his jewelry.

All of this is gifts from customers, but none of it is real. Anything of real value would have been taken from him long ago; his collection as he has known it has always been merely paste jewels and cheap metals. He pulls off the clinking bracelets, the dangling earrings. The long, drooping necklace, the countless rings, the anklet made of bells that rang as he stepped. He takes it all off and lays it  on the table, suddenly weightless.

Dean hands him a cloak from a hook nearby and Castiel wraps it around himself. Looks at his bare feet under his body, under the blue breath of his cloak and the heavy give of his flowing trousers. Says, “Okay, I’m ready.”

There is a broad black horse outside, her reins tied to a post. Dean lifts Castiel onto the saddle and says, “You don’t have to ride side saddle. Ride comfortably.”

“I’ve never ridden before,” Castiel answers him.

Dean’s clothes are sensible. His legs don’t get tangled in gauzy, ballooning trousers- his narrow to tuck into leather boots that come up over his knees. His cloak is even simpler, or at least he seems to have mastered the art of throwing it over the horse instead of getting caught in it. He sits in front of Castiel, his feet in the stirrups.

“Hold on,” he says, pulling Castiel’s hand forward to grasp at his chest. “We’re heading out to my camp, a little closer to the desert.”

Castiel holds him, and then they glide away from that house, from that city, from that life.

Castiel is free, and he has the broken chain to prove it.

He turns to watch it roll away from him, and suddenly the house that held him for so long seems so much smaller. He watches it get smaller and smaller until Dean finally says, “This is camp.”

There is a small tent and the remains of a fire. Nothing else.

Dean unhorses and helps Castiel out of the saddle. The sand is warm under his feet, but the sun has begun to set and soon it will grow cold. He wishes he had thought to grab a blanket from his room or a cushion or maybe the heavy silk curtains that would be drawn across his window.

“I have blankets, don’t worry. You can have the tent, too, if you’d like.”

Castiel looks at the low, burlap structure and shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I think I’ve been inside long enough.”

Dean nods and sits down. Begins to work at re-igniting the fire.

Castiel watches the sun continue to set, and then he watches the stars come out, and then he watches the fire. They are there for a long time, the only sound the crackling of dry tinder and the popping of sand, before Castiel says, “Once, there was a prince-”  
“There’s always a prince,” Dean interrupts.

“Would you hush?” Castiel says. “Please, I have so few things to give that aren’t paste jewels, let me tell you stories. It is why you found me, yes?”

Dean shifts just so, makes it clear he is looking at him. Studying him. Castiel wishes he could do the same, but his face is equally obscured by the cloak and the darkness. “Yes,” he says, finally.

Castiel sighs and begins again.

“Once, there was a prince.”

 


End file.
